DOINK: your milestones in guild chat, and in Discord

DOINK is an addon for World of Warcraft: Forever that tells your guild about your adventures. It watches for six kinds of in-game event (level-ups, loot, deaths, quest turn-ins, boss kills and profession skill-ups) and announces the ones you choose in guild, officer, party or raid chat the moment they happen, with real item links:

[Guild] [Flano]: Ding! Level 20.
[Guild] [Flano]: Looted [Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker]!
[Guild] [Flano]: Ragnaros down! (Molten Core, 40 players)
[Guild] [Flano]: Killed by Defias Pillager in Westfall.

Discord too. The free, open-source DOINK companion mirrors the same events to a Discord channel of your choice as class-coloured embeds with Wowhead links, so your guild's Discord sees every ding, epic and boss kill even when nobody is online, and an experimental realtime mode posts them within a second of them happening. See Discord mirroring.

Two parts, one optional. The addon alone does all the guild chat announcements. Discord posting requires the companion, a separate Windows program you download from the GitHub releases page and run alongside the game: WoW addons cannot reach the internet, so without the companion nothing goes to Discord. Install the addon from here; get the companion from GitHub if you want Discord.

No dependencies and no libraries: install it and it works. Settings are on a normal options page (Esc → Options → AddOns → DOINK) and can also be set with /doink commands. Status: beta, tracking the Forever beta client.

Credit: Dink

DOINK is heavily inspired by Dink, the RuneLite plugin by pajlads that posts your Old School RuneScape achievements to Discord. The idea of an addon that notices your milestones and tells your friends, the Discord embeds, the per-event toggles and the name all come from Dink. DOINK is not affiliated with the Dink project; it's a from-scratch WoW take on the same idea, built within what a WoW addon is allowed to do. If you play OSRS, go use Dink.

Install

Install DOINK from CurseForge or Wago Addons (or through an addon manager such as WowUp), or download DOINK-<version>.zip from Releases and copy AddOnsDOINK into your WoW AddOns folder, e.g. C:Program Files (x86)World of Warcraft_classic_beta_InterfaceAddOns. Restart WoW completely (new addons are only picked up on start).

That's it for guild chat. /doink announce test whispers you a sample of each announcement so you can see the wording. For Discord, you also need the companion: see Discord mirroring.

Announcements

Every event type, what triggers it, the exact wording, and the default rule:

The defaults are deliberately conservative because guild chat is shared. Each rule can be changed per character:

• Level-up: milestones (default), all, off
• Loot: minimum quality any, uncommon, rare, epic (default), legendary, or off
• Skill-up: max (only when a skill reaches its cap), milestones (75/150/225/300), all, off (default)
• Death, boss kill, quest: on or off

Channels: guild (default), officer, party, raid, or off. If you are not in a guild (or group) nothing is sent and /doink says so. Say, yell and public channels such as General are not offered: Blizzard only allows addons to send those in response to a key press.

Lines are sent through the normal SendChatMessage API, so they appear exactly like a line you typed yourself.

Built-in protection against spam (not configurable)

• At most one line every two seconds, and at most eight lines per minute. If more events happen than that (a chest full of epics), the extra lines are dropped and a message tells you, privately, what was dropped.
• Test commands never post to the guild. /doink test <type> and /doink announce test whisper the sample lines to you, marked [test], so you can check the wording without anyone else seeing it.
• Lines are cut at the 255-character chat limit.

Commands

All commands start with /doink. Typing /doink alone prints the status: addon version, character, how many events are queued, the announcement channel and rules, the Discord webhook state (never the full URL), the realtime state, and which event types are enabled.

Settings are per character and take effect immediately, whether changed on the settings page or by command; the two are the same settings.

Compatibility

• Built for World of Warcraft: Forever (beta client 1.60.1, Interface 16001). It uses the Classic-era API only.
• Chat patterns are built from the game's own strings (LOOT_ITEM_SELF, SKILL_RANK_UP), so loot and skill detection work on any client language.
• Forever surnames are supported: characters are tracked by full name, and whispers use the full name.

Known limitations

• The killer in a death announcement comes from the client's death recap (the same data as the "Death Recap" button). Addons cannot read the combat log in Forever, so if the recap is empty the line omits the killer.
• Announcements can't be sent to Blizzard Communities yet.
• Boss-kill announcements rely on ENCOUNTER_END, which hasn't been confirmed in Forever dungeons during the beta.

Discord mirroring with the DOINK companion

Required for Discord. Nothing in this section works with the addon alone. Discord posting needs the DOINK companion running on your Windows PC, because WoW addons cannot access the network. The addon's guild chat announcements need nothing extra.

Everything the addon announces can also land in Discord:

Flano Wren looted Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker Vendor value: 12g 34s Flano Wren-Whatever

(an embed in the item's quality colour, with the item name linking to Wowhead; level-ups and deaths use your class colour)

WoW addons cannot access the network, so Discord posting is done by a separate, optional program, the DOINK companion. Download DOINK-<version>.zip from the GitHub releases page: it contains the companion (Companiondoink.exe) and a copy of the addon. The companion is not on the addon sites and is not required for anything above.

What it is: a Windows program (doink.exe, Python packaged with PyInstaller, source in this repository, MIT) that sits in the system tray. Every two seconds it checks whether the game has written DOINK.lua; when it has, it reads the event buffer and posts each new event to a Discord webhook you provide, as an embed (class-coloured, with a Wowhead link for items and quests). It remembers what it has posted so nothing is posted twice. It reads only DOINK.lua, writes only its own three files (settings, posting history, log) in its own folder, and makes only HTTPS requests to the Discord webhook URL you paste into it.

Discord posts arrive when WoW saves addon data: on /reload, logout, or exit. That's a WoW limitation, not a setting. Play normally and your session posts when you log out, or type /doink flush to post right away. There is also an opt-in, experimental realtime mode that posts while you play; see How realtime works. Guild chat announcements are always instant.

Setting it up

1. Download DOINK-<version>.zip from Releases, move its Companion folder somewhere permanent that you can write to, e.g. DocumentsDOINK, and run doink.exe. A gold D appears in the system tray (click ^ if it's hidden) and the settings window opens.
2. In Discord: Server Settings → Integrations → Webhooks → New Webhook, choose a channel, Copy Webhook URL. Paste it into DOINK's settings, click Save, then Send test message to check it.
3. Optional: tick Start DOINK with Windows.

DOINK finds your WoW install by itself; if it can't, the settings window says so and lets you choose the folder.

To check the whole loop in game: /doink test levelup, then /doink flush. A [TEST] post should appear a few seconds after the reload.

Left-click the tray icon for settings: webhook, WoW folder, Start with Windows, and your recent posts. Hover for the last post or the current problem; if something goes wrong (no webhook, Discord unreachable) you get a Windows notification once. Right-click for Settings, Open log, Open DOINK folder, Start with Windows and Quit. Closing the settings window keeps DOINK running in the tray.

One channel per character? Set a webhook in game with /doink webhook here <url> on that character. In-game webhooks take priority over the one in DOINK's settings: per character first, then /doink webhook <url> (all characters), then the settings window. Webhook changes reach the companion on the next reload.

Notifiers (what gets recorded for Discord)

These decide which events are recorded for Discord; the chat announcement rules above are applied on top.

Money options accept 1g50s, 75s, 30c or plain copper. Quality: 0 poor, 1 common, 2 uncommon, 3 rare, 4 epic, 5 legendary.

Companion settings

The settings window covers everyday setup and saves to config.toml next to doink.exe. For the rest (dry_run, max_backlog, poll_interval, an exact savedvariables_path), see config.example.toml; quit DOINK before editing the file by hand, then start it again.

The companion remembers what it has posted (state.json), so restarting it never double-posts. The first time it sees a character it posts only the newest 10 queued events.

What doink.exe does (and doesn't)

• Reads WTFAccount*SavedVariablesDOINK.lua in your WoW folders.
• Writes only inside its own folder: config.toml (your settings), state.json (what it has already posted), doink.log (capped at ~2 MB).
• Network: only HTTPS posts to your Discord webhook. No telemetry, no update checks. It doesn't listen on any port.
• Start with Windows adds one per-user registry value, HKCUSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionRunDOINK. No admin rights. Untick it in the tray menu, or in Task Manager → Startup apps.
• Realtime (off unless you turn it on): reads the top and bottom 24 pixel rows of the WoW window while it's the active window, looking for the addon's strip. Nothing else on screen, never saved, and it watches its own CPU and memory use (details below).
• Uninstall: untick Start with Windows, quit, delete the folder.

Every release is built from this repository's source by GitHub Actions; the build log is public on the release's workflow run. Check your download against the .sha256 file on the release page:

Get-FileHash DOINK-v0.9.5.zip -Algorithm SHA256

Windows SmartScreen may warn about doink.exe because it isn't code-signed (More info → Run anyway). Code signing costs money per year; it may come later.

How realtime works (experimental)

WoW only writes addon data on /reload or logout, and in the Forever beta every other way out of the client is shut: addons can't read the combat log, and the chat and combat log files are written minutes or hours late. The one thing an addon can always do is draw on the screen. So realtime mode works like this:

1. In game, after an event, the addon shows a strip of small black and white blocks, a bit like a barcode, in a corner of the screen. It's 9 pixels tall and up to 1200 wide, shows the event's text encoded as bits, and disappears after about two seconds. Nothing shows between events.
2. The companion looks at the top and bottom 24 pixel rows of the WoW window a few times a second, finds the strip, checks it (every strip carries checksums), and posts the event. Typical delay: under a second.

What it does not do: it doesn't read the game's memory, doesn't send any input to the game, and doesn't inject anything into it. It reads pixels that your own addon put on screen, the same technique the DiscordRichPresence addon has used for years. We can't speak for Blizzard, which is why it's opt-in and labelled experimental.

Cost. Each look copies two thin bands of the window (about 250 KB) into a buffer that is allocated once and reused, and decodes them in place. Measured on the author's PC with a 3438×1408 window: about 8 looks a second, roughly 1% of one CPU core, 46 MB of memory, and a flat handle count; each look takes ~15 ms of waiting on the graphics driver but only ~1 ms of CPU. The companion measures its own capture cost, memory and Windows handle count while realtime is on, shows them in the settings window, and turns realtime off by itself if captures start costing real CPU, handles pile up, or memory keeps climbing. The normal posting path is unaffected either way.

Reliability. Realtime is best effort on top of the normal path. If the companion misses a strip (WoW was behind another window, or something covered the strip), the event still posts at the next /reload or logout, and nothing ever posts twice.

Turning it on takes two steps, because the companion can't reach into the game:

1. Settings window → tick Realtime posting.
2. In game: /doink realtime on. Then /doink realtime test shows a test pattern for ten seconds; the settings window should report it.

If something external sits in that corner (the Discord overlay's voice widget defaults to the top-left), move the strip: /doink realtime position bottomright (or topright, bottomleft). Realtime only reads while WoW is the active window; events that happen while you're alt-tabbed, or with the UI hidden (Alt-Z), post at the next reload. /doink realtime off removes the strip entirely.

How it works: what is in the package

One folder, DOINK, 13 files, about 1,700 lines of Lua, no third-party code:

The addon registers only the events listed above (plus ADDON_LOADED and PLAYER_LOGIN). It does not register the combat log event, which Forever protects, and it does not hook or replace any Blizzard function. It makes no network connections (addons can't) and reads nothing from disk.

How it works: what the addon stores

Everything is kept in one saved variable, DOINKDB, written by the game to WTFAccount<account>SavedVariablesDOINK.lua on /reload and logout:

• Per character: your settings (only the ones you changed), a counter, and a ring buffer of the last 500 events as JSON text (type, time, character, realm, class, level, and event details such as item id and name). This buffer exists for the optional companion; the addon itself never reads it back.
• Account-wide: the debug flag, the realtime settings (off by default), and any Discord webhook URL you set with /doink webhook. If you never set one, nothing is stored there.

The addon does not store chat, names of other players, or anything about other characters.

Development, source and AI use

Source code, issue tracker and the companion: https://github.com/ryan-flan/DOINK (MIT license). Every uploaded file (CurseForge and Wago Addons) is built from a tagged commit of that repository by GitHub Actions using the BigWigs packager, so the uploaded zip matches the public source exactly. The changelog for each version is generated from the commit history and attached to every file.

The repository includes an automated test suite for the addon (run outside the game against a stub of the WoW API) covering every notifier, the announcement rules, the rate limiter and the slash commands; it runs on every change.

AI use disclaimer: this addon and its companion were written with the help of an AI assistant (Anthropic's Claude), working under the direction of the developer, who decided what to build, reviewed the code, and tested each release in the Forever beta client. Every WoW API behaviour the addon relies on was verified in the game rather than assumed, and the full source is public for anyone to review.

Bugs and requests: https://github.com/ryan-flan/DOINK/issues.

Building and testing

addon/DOINK/       the addon (Lua 5.1)
addon/tests/       offline harness with WoW API stubs
companion/         the companion (Python 3.12+, standard library only)

cd addon && luajit tests/test_addon.lua
cd companion && python3 -m unittest discover -s tests
cd companion && python3 main.py --dry-run     # console mode
cd companion && python main.py --tray          # tray mode (Windows Python)

The tray, autostart, single-instance and screen-reading code (tray.py, autostart.py, pixel.py) talks to Win32 directly through ctypes; its tests run on the Windows CI job, including a capture leak test. The strip encoder is addon/DOINK/Transports/Pixel.lua; addon/tests/fixtures/ holds its output for a fixed event, which the Python decoder tests must read back. The icon is drawn by companion/assets/make_icon.py.

Push a v* tag to build doink.exe, publish a GitHub release and upload the addon to CurseForge and Wago Addons. Design notes and the event data contract are in CLAUDE.md.

License

MIT